November 16, 2010

Portrait of the Emperor's clothes

That can't be serious, I thought to myself when I turned a corner at the Gallery and saw the portrait. The mundane kitsch of the thing was shocking. There are standards. By God there are standards. Aren't there? A vase of flowers sits on the table of a dining room set behind him. The set is more middlebrow than anything you could find even at a mainstream outfit like IKEA. It is a set you'd find, I suppose, at Jennifer Convertibles. The whole scene is resolutely suburban. Aggressively suburban.

Meis is shocked at how much the portrait looks like "a Sears portrait" in quality, but what shocks *me* is how resolutely unpresidential it is.

Bush's portrait isn't just a variant, a different take on the Official Presidential Portrait genre. This painting isn't in the genre at all: this is a presidential portrait that says: "he never really felt like the President, he's just a nice old guy".

Every other President, for his official portrait, chose to wear serious, formal clothing, and pose in a serious setting. Their portraits show responsible adults, hard-working and aware of their place in history. Sitting or standing, their posture is upright, and they dominate the space they're in.

In addition to the conventions of the genre, each Presidential portrait is also propaganda for the particular President. The portrait is painted and presented to the National Gallery only after the President leaves office -- the propaganda is aimed at the verdict of history, not the polls.

Look how the three preceding Presidents wanted to be remembered:

For Bill Clinton, two flags are better than one, and the golden draperies on either side of him re-double the message: he's on the straight and narrow, you bet, don't listen to those haters. George H.W. Bush also is really shoveling in the symbols: a globe (he thought about the whole world), a piece of paper (he was hard-working), *and* standing in front of a painting about the Civil War (he dealt with the gravest of issues). Ronald Reagan's portrait, by Everett Raymond Kinstler, is IMHO the most effective of the lot. Reagan is clearly in the White House (pillars of history), but looking out over a vista. He's relaxed and smiling, confident in his position. The message is clear: It's Morning in America.

But from GW Bush, we not only get casual clothing, we get a casual posture -- and not a flattering one, either. GWB is sitting on a sofa (presumably at Camp David) so low that his knees come up higher than his waist, and he's leaning forward onto his hands and the arm of the sofa. Morgan Meis thinks the ring of GWB's arms is striking and significant, but it looks to me like one of artist Bob Anderson's standard arm poses. The overall effect of GWB's posture is to make him look shorter, diminished -- he takes up less space in the canvas than the usual President.

But there is nothing here of leadership, responsibility, tough decisions, the verdict of history, or even morning in America. There is nothing to remind us of his *job*, the work he was elected to do and that this portrait is supposed to commemorate.

As I've worked on this post I've been going back and forth in my mind. Sometimes I think this portrait is a big F.U. to the verdict of history and the office of the Presidency: "You think I failed? I didn't even try! I didn't want to do the work, I didn't even think of myself as the President. And you know what, Dad? I love Mom best."

But then sometimes I look at it another way, and think he's refusing to have a serious Presidential portrait because he knows he failed at being President, and his only hope for swaying the verdict of history is to say: "But I was a really nice guy, honest! Just the sort of person you'd want to have a conversation with. Let's not think about unpleasantness, OK?" From this POV, I think he's telling the truth when he says Kanye West calling him racist was the low point of his Presidency: Bush *knows* he's a failure, but he doesn't think that makes him a *bad person* or anything, and he is stung, truly hurt, that people might think he's not, you know, *nice*.

But then I look back at the picture, and I see the shirt. Morgan Meis says:

I like how clean his shirt is, how crisp are the lines running up the right arm that Bush rests with such infinite comfort on his leg. The ridge of that crease on that brilliantly ironed light blue shirt is a promise to us all. The ridge of fabric says this: Certain things exist with certainty. But that fact is no big deal, either.

Part of being a reviewer, of course, is to sling bull -- but this is bull. A casual shirt ironed to a crispy crease doesn't mean "certain things exist with certainty", it means "this shirt just came out of the box". It's not just casual, it's *faux" casual -- the way GWB is a faux cowboy. And apparently the way he wants to present himself is as a faux President.

Comments

Here's why it works so well: it's a final "test of faith" for the Republican loyalists.... Not for the people that actually like Sears portraits, but for that otherwise intelligent, competent guy who happened to be a Republican who came down fully on the side of the Iraq war , torture, and learned to hate Al Gore and John Kerry because he really, really loved tax cuts. This portrait represents a final loyalty test: can those supporters be forced to praise the portrait? We already convinced them to become global warming denialists and got them to mouth the platitudes they hear on Fox News and are taught to repeat on the WSJ editorial page, but here is the final task-- you must, with a straight face, talk about how great the presidential portrait is to show that you're "really" a Republican. You can do it: that coveted position as secretary of the Rotary Club is yours if you do.

Maybe he's rejecting the pretentiousness of the formal portrait with it's propaganda overtones and wants a picture that's closer to who he really was as a person. It's ridiculous to think that an official portrait will add even a farthing to the weight of a president's official actions on the scales of history.

Personally, I think the Reagan portrait is off too, although in a different way. In the small image the background looks Arcadian and in the enlarged version impressionist. The body changes from that style at the bottom to photorealistic at the top. The pose is good.
I think the GHW Bush portrait is the best of them despite being deliberately 'old-fashioned'.
While I think GWB's is not a really bad painting per se, I agree that one would not expect that to be the POTUS. The head looks a bit too small for the body and the whole figure looks slightly shortened vertically. One is drawn towards the flower pot immediately and that is the cardinal sin here, esp. since 'I'd rather have voted for a flower pot than...' and variants thereof have become proverbial. Cutting the top and removing the pot would make the picture much better (still not presidential).
---
Gazing into the future, what do you expect Obama's official painting will look like?
I guess there are two choices. Either it will be 'fresh' and 'different' (maybe like http://www.noows.de/gallery/barak_obama.jpg>this or it will be ultraconservative and totally stiff (I somehow imagine it to look like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnolfini_Portrait>this. The face would fit perfectly ;-).

he looks like a regular guy, sitting in a nice sitting room, surrounded by well-placed, professional-grade, photo lighting. the light is directly on him, and yet there are nearly no shadows - just enough to suggest a little depth, but not enough so you could figure out where the light is coming from.

OK, someone (that would be me) without talent (ditto) came up with this Obama family portrait ;-)
the left half of which could be turned presidential portraitish.
(I was too lazy to find a photo where he makes a longer face like Mr. Arnolfini in the original)

Good for President Bush. Really. The convergence of US presidential imagary on royalty, at least since Kennedy, and accelerating since Reagan, is one of the things that the big wide world has found most disturbing about the "American century".

Remember that sovereignty in the United States belongs to the people, and that the President is an elected civil servant, and give no quarter to those in Washington who would prefer it otherwise.

In an ideal world Obama would leave a crayon drawing of himself by one of his daughters.

TS's link shows us Madame Tussaud's George W. Bush, with a bleak DC sky partially seen through the window, and the clock at ten minutes to quitting time.

The book on the desk has no title that is legible, and is probably a prop in any event because everyone knows Bush can't read. But he's got his flag pin on, which is good. I mean, why have those giant flags in your office when you can carry one around with you wherever you go?

Hartmut, no way Obama goes for anything but the most conservative approach to his portrait. Like a lot of trailblazers before him, he's partly working on making the majority of the country comfortable, but letting them know that the world is not radically changing around them. (Of course, the more paranoid are sure that the world is ending because he is so different. But some people simply cannot be reassured.)

As for GW Bush, I suspect that he decided that the flack was not worth it -- so a more "normal" official portrait got wheeled in quickly. But the first one definitely was successful at characterizing someone who was perfectly capable of doing the job . . . but really disinclined to put out the effort to do it well. Which, looking at his whole career, was a pretty accurate description.

I guess the question si exactly why does it fit so well to have such an inappropriate portrait of a PResident.

My client had the TV on so my eyes and ears were assaulted by a snippet of "Sarah Pailn's Alaska": Herself, the Earmark Queen, smugly burbling about how she loves the wild and being "free" and "away from Washington".

At first my reaction was that she had just sunk any hope of being President because that clip could be made so easily inot an ad against her. Who wants to elect a President that would rather go fishing than govern, who sneers so openly about her preference for being on vacation to doing her job?

But.

Georgie got elected twice because he was the guy people wanted to drink beer with.

Smug? Check.
WIllfully, indeed gleefully and unapologetically, ignorant? Check
Someone who you would like to drink/fish/hunt/with? Check.
Expresses hate for Washington? Check.

If this is an acceptable image of a President, maybe Sarah Palin can get elected after all.

This picture is silly looking, but then, the other portraits are in some ways worse, since they are part of that unhealthy tendency Americans have to put Presidents on a pedestal.

What we should have for Presidents is a montage--the high and low points illustrated in the background with the pompous idiot standing in the foreground. For Bush--well, someone tell me the high points. For the low points we could have photos from Abu Ghraib, people wading around in New Orleans, headlines about the collapse on Wall Street, stuff like that. For Clinton there could be something symbolizing the relative prosperity of the era. mixed with hints of how he helped set the framework for the financial collapse later on. Some pictures of Iraqi children suffering under sanctions would be good. That's the idea.

Setting aside all of the metaphorical and style issues, it's just not a very good painting in terms of composition. Others have remarked on the vase of flowers, but I think they've understated just how much it sabotages the picture by drawing attention away from the subject. It's supposed to be a background set piece, but it's bright and sharply contrasting where the rest of the background is in very muted, homogeneous tones. This is especially striking given the vignetting effect that's been painted into the picture, where the lighting seems to fade around the edges--it makes it look like the vase is at least as important as the subject.

That said, I find that I don't really think the painting is all that inappropriate. Or rather, it is, but it doesn't bother me. Twenty years from now we'll have a generation of voters with no living memory of W's presidency, and everything they hear about our lost decade will be the stuff of history books or the memories of their parents. Some kid, somewhere, will look at this portrait, see how jarring it is, and think, "wow, he really was a clown compared to the rest of them".

If that's even one person, it's worth it. I hope they don't change it.

It's not a terrible portrait, but it's the sort that you'd put on the wall of your house, not the National Gallery. The casual nature of the pose is slightly shocking when compared to all the others. I think Bush always relished his image as the President you'd most like to have a beer with, and this portrait is intended to reinforce that. But in a hundred years, people are going to wonder why there's a portrait of Uncle George mixed in with all the presidents.

Looking at the gallery on Wikipedia, I'm a little surprised by how few of the portraits I actually like. Teddy Roosevelt, Taft, and Harding are all good, and the JFK is, imo, the best of the bunch.

Hmm, so why is the GWB portrait on the Wikipedia page different from the one we're talking about? It's more conventional, but I think it's even worse than Uncle George. His posture and hand position make him look tentative and uncomfortable, almost like a photo taken when he wasn't quite ready. At least casual Bush looks like he belongs in the painting.

The one on Wikipedia, according to Wikipedia, was commissioned by the Union League Club in Philadelphia. (I've been there. It's a weird anachronism, IMO.) Do they normally commission the "offical" portraits, or did Wikipedia just use that one as a stand-in until the real one was painted? (The photo of Obama is obviously not his official portrait.)

Good for President Bush. Really. The convergence of US presidential imagary on royalty, at least since Kennedy, and accelerating since Reagan, is one of the things that the big wide world has found most disturbing about the "American century".

Remember that sovereignty in the United States belongs to the people, and that the President is an elected civil servant, and give no quarter to those in Washington who would prefer it otherwise.

Right, and so the President should be depicted in a dignified manner, as befitting the solemnity of the office. That's why they are depicted in dark suits, the very opposite of royal regalia.

Kings generally wear business suits these days. The suit is even more of a symbol of masculine dominance and class distinction than it used to be.

I like wearing one occasionally for just that reason.

And of course it's also a symbol of conformity and submission. When I see businessmen walking down the street in uncomfortable suits and ties while I'm wearing whatever I feel like, I feel a sense of relative freedom and status escalation (although I'm sure they mostly see me and think "Another useless underpaid flake", so it works out fine for both of us).

Point is, let's pretend I have a point here, the point is that a suit or lack of same isn't all that conclusive. George W. Bush was a suburban President, yes. America is a suburban nation, in large part. What's the big deal?